Literature

Suffering in a Sentimental Age

Flannery O’Connor, who died fifty years ago this year aged only thirty-nine, knew much about suffering as a result of the serious medical problems that constrained her brief life, yet she could still write: People’s suffering tears us up now in a way that in a healthier age it did not. And of course everybody weeps over loneliness. It is practically a disease. The particular ways O’Connor thought the modern age was unhealthy are found in her selected correspondence, The Habit of Being. It is also possible to chart her medical history from her correspondence, but this is a matter…

Subscribe to get access to all online articles

Digital Subscription

$98/ YR

Get the latest ideas from Australia’s most insightful writers.

Subscribe

  • Digital Subscription includes
  • Online editions of Quadrant Magazine
  • Printed editions of Quadrant Magazine
  • iPad ready PDF
  • Access to Quadrant Archives
  •  
  •  

Printed & Digital Subscription

$118/ YR

For avid readers of leading ideas
from Australia’s brightest.

Subscribe

  • Printed & Digital Subscription includes
  • Online editions of Quadrant Magazine
  • Printed editions of Quadrant Magazine
  • iPad ready PDF
  • Access to Quadrant Archives
  •  
  •  

Quadrant Patron

$300/ YR

Show your support for Australia’s
most open minded publication.

Subscribe

  • Quadrant Patron includes
  • Online editions of Quadrant Magazine
  • Printed editions of Quadrant Magazine
  • iPad ready PDF
  • Access to Quadrant Archives
  • All new editions of Quadrant Books
  • Exclusive invitations to Quadrant Dinners, book launches and events.